At the beginning of this year or the end of last year, the Bored Ape community was already rumored to be releasing its own second-layer expansion, ApeChain.
BAYC, the former top Non-Fungible Token (NFT) ecosystem, was once seen as the top luxury item in the on-chain and even the entire metaverse ecosystem. To maintain that unattainable position, it has tried many things:
It has released several new NFTs, issued tokens, and developed games (more than one)...
At the time, it seemed to have done everything it should have done along the lines of IP and entertainment.
However, the entire crypto ecosystem has been languishing, and all these measures have basically had no obvious effect, with the popularity continuously dissipating and the value continuously diminishing.
In addition, limited by the lack of innovation in the application of the crypto ecosystem itself, BAYC has not broken new ground in applications.
So, in the end, this project fell from its divine status, dragging down all the assets of the entire project - at the lowest point, BAYC NFTs were only worth more than 10 Ether, mutant ape NFTs were only worth more than 2 Ether, and the token ApeCoin fell below $1.
Later, as Ethereum's second-layer expansion technologies gradually matured and emerged as a tool for many projects to develop their own ecosystems, BAYC finally also began to consider releasing its own second-layer expansion.
Now, ApeChain has finally been launched.
The ApeChain website (https://apechain.hub.caldera.xyz/) is quite interesting, as it clearly marks its data availability (DA) as Ethereum, the network used as Arbitrum One, and the Rollup technology stack used as Arbitrum Nitro - the entire system is built on the Arbitrum technology framework.
I remember that when the community first proposed to build ApeChain, there were two opinions: one was to start from scratch and build a L1-level main chain, and the other was to build a second-layer expansion based on the OP architecture on Ethereum.
Regarding this, the OP team even publicly stated on Twitter that they were willing to support the project team to build a second-layer expansion based on their technology stack.
At the time, I really hoped that the project team would take the second route, as this would keep their ecosystem within Ethereum, which would not only help the Ethereum ecosystem, but also allow the project itself to continue to grasp Ethereum's traffic.
Now it seems that the project team has taken the second route, but has not chosen the OP Stack, but rather the Arbitrum Nitro architecture.
In fact, no matter what technology is chosen, as long as it can stay within the Ethereum ecosystem (like becoming a second-layer expansion as it is now), I think it is the optimal solution for both the project team and the users.
In addition to the formal launch of ApeChain, an interesting move by the project team is the direct launch of its own MEME coin sales platform: Ape Express, which is directly labeled as the Pump Fun on ApeChain.
Some well-known KOLs (such as Beeple) and media (such as NFT NOW) in the circle have commented on Ape Express on Twitter.
Stimulated by these news, both BAYC NFTs and the project's token Ape have seen a certain degree of upward movement in a short period of time.
However, I still believe that these price increases driven by emotions are not very sustainable, and ApeChain will ultimately need to continue to find ways to innovate in applications to gain sustained valuable traffic and TVL.
But doing something is better than doing nothing. Also, judging from the comments and attention on Twitter, BAYC still carries a lot of weight in the minds of many old players. If the project team can really launch some fun innovations, I believe the project's popularity will quickly rebound.
During this period, seeing the vigorous emergence of one Ethereum second-layer expansion after another, although I feel that many of them have no new ideas or highlights, I can still feel that the potential of Ethereum is continuously accumulating.
Perhaps when this tiny, drop-by-drop "inconspicuous" or even "mediocre" second-layer expansion ecosystem has accumulated to a certain extent, the Ethereum ecosystem will experience a leap from "quantitative change to qualitative change".
